Jim Wells, PhD

Jim Wells, PhD, is a Professor in his home Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and holds a joint appointment as Professor in the UCSF School of Medicine’s Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology. At UCSF, Dr. Wells’ research group focuses on the discovery and design of small molecules that trigger or modulate cellular processes in inflammation and cancer. Dr. Wells’ research spans the multiple disciplines of biophysics, cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry and chemistry. Dr. Wells also directs the Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC), which he founded. The SMDC is located at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus in the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), where Wells is a faculty affiliate.

Before joining UCSF, Dr. Wells was a founding scientist in Genentech’s Protein Engineering Department. He then founded Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, where he served as President and Chief Scientific oOfficer and co-invented a novel drug discovery process, called Tethering, to efficiently screen molecules in search of the most potent compounds to block specific protein action.

In addition to his membership in the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Wells is a recipient of many honors, including the Hans Neurath Award by the Protein Society, the Pfizer Award given by the American Chemical Society, the du Vigneaud Award given by the American Peptide Society and the 2006 Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award. He earned a PhD degree in biochemistry from Washington State University and completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University School of Medicine.